Surfaces of articles of dinnerware, hollow ware, tile and various pieces of art ware have been decorated in various ways. Decoration of such ware by hand painting required considerable skill, talent, and care in order to produce many pieces of dinnerware which appeared attractive and closely similar. Hand painting was, of course, very time consuming but was valued for its artistic hand crafted appearance.
Mechanical methods of applying decorative colorant materials to the surface of ceramic ware included stenciling, stamping, lithographic and silk screen decalcomania, transfer printing, and direct and indirect screen printing. In each of these latter methods the decorative material could be rapidly applied to surfaces with substantial uniformity. However, some of the artistic hand crafted appearance of the decorative design was lost.
Still other methods of applying decorative colorant composition material to the surface of ceramic ware have included hand bulbing and automatic or machine bulbing. Hand bulbing included the careful manual deposition as by pressure squeezing a bulb to cause flow of colorant material on a surface within the confines of a stamped or marked pattern. Uniformity of pattern was achieved, but hand bulbing was still a slow process for decorating articles such as dinnerware. Decoration of dinnerware by automatic machine bulbing is described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,885,552 owned by the assignee of this invention and application.
In each of the prior proposed methods of decorating a surface of ceramic ware, colorant material was applied by flowing, stamping or printing a quantity of colorant material onto the ceramic surface, the amount of colorant material applied being controlled by either the skill of the operator or the amount of material carried by the stamp or transfer devices. In such methods, the definition of the design was dependent upon the skill of the operator or predetermined by the configuration of the stencil, decalcomania, silk screen, the delineation of the pattern on the transfer medium, or the delineation of the pattern on the ware itself.
Thus in prior proposed methods of decorating ceramic ware, the amount of colorant material applied to the ceramic surface was under the immediate control of the operator and uniformity of pattern often depended upon his skill in applying the colorant material. The latter characteristic was not true of automatic bulbing as described in said Letters Patent because a mold provided pattern defining edges and an excess quantity of material was used in the mold pattern openings for deposition on the surface being decorated, excess material being withdrawn from said surface after a selected time period had lapsed.
Ceramic surfaces to be decorated are often not flat and include surfaces curved in three dimensions. Prior proposed apparatus for stamping or applying a composition material to a three dimensionally curved surface have included use of vertically reciprocal rods spring biased in one direction and each adapted to carry a stamp head or other printing means. Such vertically reciprocal rods were supported by a flat plate, the rods extending through the plate and having a collar thereon against which one end of a biasing spring was seated so that when the article was brought into position for application of the design, movement of the plate would cause the printing end of the rods to be moved against the three dimensional surface to stamp or print the design on the surface. Such prior methods and apparatus are illustrated in U.S. Pat. Nos. 834,181; 1,515,561; 1,928,715; 2,372,089; 2,437,224; and 2,623,452.
It has also been known to place a wire loop on the end of a handle and manually dip the wire loop into a body of fluid material to cause the material to form a film extending across the wire loop and to then manually place the wire loop on a surface to deposit the fluid material on the surface in the configuration of the wire loop. Such manual deposition of a decorative material on a surface depended upon the skill and carefullness of the operator in bringing the wire loop into proper contact with the surface at a selected location on the surface. Accurate manual repetition of a pattern on different surfaces was imprecise and time consuming.